Tips for Thresh – Bot Lane Support & Other Roles

First off, Thresh is a beast if played correctly.  You’ve seen Edward from Moscow 5 BenQ on him I would hope, and that is the potential.  His poke is great, he has great CC and a knock back, and his ultimate can be used to trap people and peel for your ADC in a teamfight or used in the middle of the teamfight and also used to save a teammate when he is getting chased by the enemy team.  He can be played mid lane also, and is damn good at it.

Here are some tips to help you, and to help you help your team mates.

1) Your teammates need to click the lantern to jump, all you do is throw out a super noticeable shield, which teammates like Lee Sin can jump too. A lot of people still don’t know to click the lantern, so you should probably warn them at the start of the game.

2) Despite only having 475 AA range, Thresh’s auto -harass is very strong. Your Q passive makes your autos hit harder the longer you don’t attack (up to 200% bonus AD after 10 seconds). The other part of the Q passive is that your autos also do 1 on-hit magic damage PER SOUL you have. You have 42 souls in lane? Enjoy the free wit’s end proc.

3) Thresh’s Q hook actually counts as a stun for 1.5 seconds. You can use this to disable aggressors on your teammates when you’re too low to go in to flay them. When you hook someone, they initially get dragged back to you a short distance and you can press Q again to jump to them. If you walk away from them after initially landing the hook, your target gets dragged toward you a second time and then you can leap to them.

4) While your passive gives you a lot of armor and on-hit magic damage, it gives you a noticeable amount of AP. While it is a small amount on your QWE because of their low ratios, your ult has a 1.0 AP ratio. This means your high base damage on your ult and the 1.0 AP ratio can make you chunk someone in a duel bot lane, so placing the box so that the wall activates immediately as it spawns under them can provide good immediate burst and CC. The ult also causes a 99% slow (not completely 99% because your MS can not be dropped below a certain point), abuse this.

5) While collecting souls is great, do not put yourself into a position where you can gibbed when you pick up a soul. You have two choices. If your bot lane isn’t going to fight/get initiated on and you’re safe, you can throw your lantern and your lantern will pick up souls next to it. You can then walk out of your lantern’s leash range and pull it to you, putting the shield on you and your teammate next to you. If you don’t wish to waste your lantern cooldown because you think you might need it, let it go, you’ll be getting a lot of souls anyways.

6) Thresh is a very strong CC/tank support who does well with very aggressive ADCs. Thresh can hold the enemy ADC in place while Draven juggles axes off their face. MF+Thresh is probably the best combination, if not one of the most powerful lanes in the game now I noticed, simply due to the kill lane potential and teamfight presence of it. The raw amount of damage you can put on someone means you can gib someone at level 2 easily when you land a hook and flay them back towards you. Thresh synergizes amazingly well with her ult because he can flay people to keep them in, box to prevent them from walking out, and even hook someone to drag them back into the ult. Thresh also provides an escape for MF with his lantern teleport. Combined with her high health and the barrier/lantern shield combo, MF can more freely cast her ult without worrying about getting instagibbed. Thresh isn’t as CC heavy as Leona but he has stronger support capabilities which means his power/threat doesn’t immediately fade when his lane falls behind. I’d say he hard counters Blitzcrank pretty fiercely if played right. He can auto down Blitz with his AA range and Q passive, throw his lantern to pull back anyone that gets Rocket Grabbed, becomes more durable and does more damage, as well as having very strong team fight CC. He can also hook Blitz when he hooks someone to stun Blitz so he can’t power fist them.

• Thresh is FUN. I never had so much fun as a support for ages. You can make HUGE plays and pull sick stuff, even with no items. It’s a champion you notice when he is successful, just like Blitz, and people will definitely acknowledge your skill with him, which is deeply satisfying.
• His passive is pure genius from Riot. Because it gives the support SOMETHING TO DO aside from warding and poking/trading. It’s like you are CSing yourself, really. It feels like you are farming something too. This is excellent in my opinion. You are getting more powerful thanks to minion deaths, but it doesn’t imply getting gold. Great design. I find myself excited when I see 2/3 souls on the floor ready to be picked, just like you are an ADC ready to clean a huge wave pushing your tower.
• About the passive, you need 68 souls at level 18 for Thresh’s passive to become “worthy”. Meaning, above 68 souls, you get more armor than Blitz and Nautilus at level 18 (with no items), the other 2 noticeable “hookers”. The AP is just an added bonus. 68 souls are actually very easy to reach BEFORE level 18. Usually around level 10 if you had a good laning phase.
• His Q > E combo is very scary. There is a trick to max out the CC uptime. Hook first, step backwards a little to pull your target backwards too, and THEN press Q again to jump on him at the last second (if you have enough HP). Then, Flay backwards, and apply Exhausts. This is DEADLY if done right. At level 6, add the Ultimate and it’s golden.
• Lantern is tricky. People are not used to it yet. Give it time. I’d say a few weeks. It’s easy to fire and forget in a team fight from your POV, but with all the tunnel vision this game has, most people will not see it. Don’t rage ! We need a few “pro picks” of Thresh and some VOD/YouTube to advertise it. Competitive gaming will display that for sure in the next weeks.
• In team fights, you CAN engage. If you have Shurelia and some HP/resists (say, Shurelia, Sighstone, Merc treds and maybe parts of aegis) you can easily dive in, “a la” Amumu (on a squishy target of course), do your thing, drop the ultimate, drop lantern on yourself, exhaust, and keep finger on Flash if you get focused hard. It just works. Don’t do it if you are behind though.
• You have sick peel potential. Use it. That nasty Xin dives your ADC ? Flay him out. Q him. Box him. Shield your ADC. You can peel just like Janna or Lulu, maybe even better, if the ADC can use the lantern properly.

TLDR Thresh is a very aggressive CC/tank support that possesses defensive support skills, making him a bit of the road between Leona and Janna, working best bot lane with Draven+Thresh or MF+Thresh. His souls give him more armor, more AP for ability damage and shield strength, and more on-hit magic damage. He is probably one of the best scaling supports in the game due to his passive (to be fair, Blitzcrank hook will always be one of the strongest abilities in the game).